Hello, welcome to Episode 6 of Season 2. I am so sorry that there was a terrible delay in releasing this episode. As it turns out Jodie and I went to Maui to get married and I was ill prepared to run this final episode of Season 2. Wait, final episode? Yup, you heard. This is the final episode of our second season here. And we want to thank you so much for listening to us at all! Woo-Hoo! Thank you!

Our question today is: How can you tell if someone is being genuine? I found this question easier to approach if I divided it into two separate categories. The first one being if you are talking about someone you know fairly well, like friends, family, loved-ones, or coworkers, basically people that someone might have an actual relationship with. The second group would be strangers or people that someone is simply observing out in the world. 

I think it is important to separate the situations into these two groups because of what is implied. With the first group, wanting to know if someone is being genuine is important because we are often wanting to help the other people in that group. We care about them and what is best for that other person normally. However when it comes to strangers we are concerned more with the idea of suspicion and stranger danger. We want to know if the other person is telling the truth because that will help keep us safe. 

So if we are talking about someone you care about, how can you tell that they are being genuine? Generally speaking people are not going to lie about being transgender. There really isn’t anything to gain. Some may think that one gains attention, but it certainly isn’t good attention! Normally the lives of transgender people are fraught with peril and it is not a path the people take on just a whim. For myself, before I started telling anyone, I was aware of my gender variance for several decades. I was well aware of my transgender status, even if nobody else did. 

In the early days of my transition I had many kind and caring people in my life who were trying to assess my sincerity and when I questioned them about it they generally told me that they were concerned on my behalf on whether or not I would want to eventually detransition. And I think there is something in that implying how important people think that decisions regarding gender are. 

We have kind of been conditioned as a society to think that transition related regret is a huge deal. However out of all people who have ever transitioned only 3% have de-transitioned. Meaning they decided to go back to presenting as their birth gender. But within even that very small group, only 5% of that group state that they are de-transitioning because they no longer consider themselves transgender. Generally people de-transition because of a lack of support. 

Okay but what if you are trying to assess the genuine-ness of somebody that you don’t even know? Sadly there isn’t really any way to tell if someone is telling the truth to you or not. That is a difficult thing about interacting with other human beings on this planet. My opinion is to try and assume people are telling me the truth, as they see it, until that person proves otherwise. What else can we really do? 

Our next topic is one that seems to be getting lots of press lately, which is how schools are not telling parents if their child is exhibiting any sort of transgender expression. Sadly this is getting translated to schools and educators being accused of grooming students. 

Lawsuits are being filed around the country accusing schools of withholding information about their children. The real truth is that  schools are withholding information from parents, but it is because schools are trying to protect children from their parents. 

Many parents are not very supportive when their children attempt to come out as transgender. Frequently parents will actually cause harm to their children by attempting to encourage them to not be transgender. Most systems that attempt to convince someone that they are not actually transgender really only make most transgender people more likely to kill themselves. 

So to help protect the lives of human beings, schools will often not tell a parent about anything having to do with their children being transgender, unless they have that child’s explicit permission. In California it is actually a law that we are not allowed to inform the parents without that permission. Again, this is to help protect the students.

The sad reality is that if a child feels safe to tell their parents, generally that child will tell them themselves. If a child isn’t being open it is probably because of a directly observed knowledge or by a perception of intolerance or lack of willingness to understand. This can be very hard for some parents to understand as they may see themselves as being nothing but kind and caring to their child. But you have to be willing to look at the big picture. What does your news say about transgender people? What does your religion say? What do your voting patterns say? What does the environment you are raising your children in actually really say? That you celebrate differences between people and you deeply care about the well being of all humans, especially the ones that are different? 

Today’s What The Hell segment is all about people sticking their tongues onto things that maybe they really shouldn’t be putting their tongues onto. 

The first thing we discuss is how humans are being discouraged from licking or even handling the Sonoran Desert Toad. This is apparently a toad that secretes substances that act like a drug. However this is a dangerous drug as too much can kill people. So the national park service has issued a warning to stop licking things. Yes licking things in general because humans are ever in search of substances to get them high.

But apparently humans are not the only creatures on the planet that are interested in taking drugs. There are dogs in Australia that are also licking frogs in an attempt to get high. The dogs are smart enough though that they understand how too much of a good thing can be deadly. The dogs will limit their use of the frogs in an effort to be safer than humans. 

While researching this lovely information Jodie happened upon a variety of things that people are interested in licking. Like a cat. It is not to get high though, it is just because this woman likes to do it. Um okay. But that is not all. There are a couple of other items that people have decided to lick. Why, who knows?

Okay lovely people, thank you so much for listening to our show. We super appreciate you being here. We would also really like to hear from you. So please feel free to reach out and send us a shout out or a question at hostess@transcister.com